Part I. Report of progress in 1869, by J. S. Newberry, chief geologist. Part II. Report of progress in the second district, by E. B. Andrews, assist. geologist. Part III. Report on geology of Montgomery County, by Edward Orton, assist. geologist.

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when the protection to our industry afforded by our present tariff will be
removed. I don't say it should be, for I don't believe it should, but simply that it will. For this impending storm our iron men must trim their
sails. All the light of foreign experience must be thrown on our processes, while the problems presented by the ores, fuels and fluxes of each
locality are to be carefully worked out, and capital concentrated so that
our furnaces may consist of several stacks, carried on by one set of machinery, and one set of officials instead of several, thus simplifying and
cheapening all branches of the art. When this shall be done, whatever
political wind may blow, our iron industry will be always prosperous,
ever expanding, and our greatest source of wealth.
THE ELLERSHAUSEN PROCESS.
In the manufacture of bar-iron and steel, the evidences of progress is
still greater than in the art of reducing the ore, and it is not impossible
that our present methods of manufacture, in five years from this time,
will be entirely revolutionized. In the manufacture of bar-iron, the most
striking invention that has been introduced of late years, is that of the
Ellershausen Process. This is due to a man by the name of Ellershausen,
who was a lumber merchant in Canada. When he had nearly stripped
his timber lands, and had acquired a fortune in so doing, his attention
was attracted to the ledges of iron ore which his property contained, and
abandoning the lumber trade, he went into the manufacture of iron.
The ore he used, like so much of the Canadian ore, proved to be impure,
and the enterprise was unfortunate and entailed the sacrifice of the fortune he had acquired. In his efforts to surmount the difficulties he encountered, Ellershausen thought and read widely on the subject of ironmaking, and ultimately he devised a method by which, as he thought,
the ordinary process would be greatly shortened. Going to New York
with his plan, he there met with little encouragement, and thence turned
his steps to Pittsburgh, the greatest centre of iron industry in the
country. Here he fell in with my friend, T. S. Blair, of the firm of J. H.
Shcenberger & Blair, one of the most intelligent and thoroughly-educated
of our iron men. By him Ellershausen was given the opportunity to
test his method, and the ultimate success he attained is due, in no small
part, to the suggestions he received from Mr. Blair.
The Ellershausen process may be explained in very few words. We
have seen that pig-iron consists of pure metallic iron, with four to five
per cent. of carbon, while the richer iron ores consist mainly of iron and
oxygen. Ellershausen's theory was that iron ore could be mingled with
cast iron in such a way that the oxygen of the ore would unite with the
carbon of the pig metal, and, passing off as carbonic oxide, leave the
iron of both elements in the combination in the metallic state. The ex